It's the usual story - start up a blog and come down with a bad case of the writer's block. I've got a feeling it stems from me making a mistake on my very first entry - writing googling instead of goggling: very 21st century.

Tried to have a look on the blogger list at other blogs to see if I can see what other people do, but the best I could come up with is one of those silly quizzes that you only seem to find on blogs and old John Hughes movies. I guess I'll give it a go just to keep the *cough* momentum of the blog, but I'll need to hustle up* for future reference to make sure I actually have something to write in this thing.

As Lennon once said: "Life is what you do when you are otherwise making plans." Or he should have said that if my memory was better. Funny, looking at that quote makes me think it was the other Lenin - the 'What Is To Be Done?' anti-socialist who would have been better served coming up with that quote, though his version would have been more in the nature of: "Negating the essential nature of socialism - self emanicpation - in the name of socialist revolution is what you do. It's dialectical, innit."

*hustle up - no, I don't know what it means either.

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says

"Although the Knights attempted to organize workers by industry rather than craft, craft unions of skilled workers were being formed as a rival force within the union movement." Damn, and line 5 was much more interesting. No - not the much needed definitive history of the Barron Knights but Eric Thomas Chester's 'True Mission: Socialists and the Labour Party Question in the U.S.' Yeah, you've guessed it, a book written by an academic with a Victorian era style beard.

What is it with those beards and what do they hide? Double chins? No chins? Bad teeth? Acne scars? or The smug satisfied grin of an academic churning out another pot boiling history to secure next year's tenure? Probably a combination of point 1 and 5.

Mental note to self: Don't leave Proust's 'Rememberance of Things Past' in the bog next time - already lost important intellectual kudos points and its only question 1.

2.Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?

Nothing, but it's good to do a bit of callisthenics every once in a while.

3.What is the last thing you watched on TV?

Reports of yesterday's Premiership games on the early morning news. 'Cos I had the sound down, I missed the goals and now I have to stay awake to see a repeat of the 'Big Match' or whatever its called now this morning.

4.WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what time it is:

6.25am

5.Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?

6.43am - which just goes to show how time consuming this blogging business actually is (tsk, tsk, moaning on your second date), especially when putting in the italics and bold.

6.With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?:

Absolutely sod all - it's too late for the late night revellers and too early for the 24/7 piss heads. A true sabbath moment.

7.When did you last step outside? what were you doing?

Last night - about 9pm - to buy a bag of chips 'cos I was too lazy to open a tin. (One of those cheaper home brand tins that don't come with the ring pull.) It was the usual Saturday night of twentysomethings doing the Lambeth Walk up and down the high street. My main train of thought however was: "Result! I haven't got the scabby chips for a change."

8.Before you came to this website, what did you look at?

BBC news website - just to check if a comment I had posted on 40 years of the BBC had been included in the comments section. I just want to reassure myself - who else would be reading this? - that I don't usually send emails to such comments boxes, but I just wanted to maintain my one man campaign of talking up John Byrne's 'Tutti Frutti' - a comedy/drama of absolute genuis that no other swine seems to wax lyrical about, so it has got to the stage where sometimes I just think I must have imagined the whole thing. This thread of thought is not so paranoic as it first appears: a drama series in which Emma Thompson is both fanciable and likeable? Yeah - it's hard to believe, but its true. I was truly gutted when I later realised that it wasn't her real accent.

I do confess to occasionally looking at comments I've posted to email discussion lists, however. No - not narcissism, just a game I like to play when I get to spot how many typo and grammatical mistakes I can make in one post. If it's below ten, I consider it a result. I really must learn to proof read what I write before posting it in future. (Googling versus goggling is a minor footnote in comparison.)

9.What are you wearing?

Oh christ - I promised myself it wouldn't be that sort of blog. OK working from the ground floor up: A pair of black boots - my only pair of shoes/boots - that have seen better days. I think it is the dirt that is keeping them together.

A pair of dark blue jeans that were bought when I was slimmer than I am now. The top button is gone so I therefore have to wear something over them to 'mind the gap'.

An old grey T shirt with Joe Hill of IWW fame on the front and the IWW logo on the back. Bought it at the Respect Anti-Racism festival in Finsbury Park at least four years ago - (I suspect longer). It was bought from the IWW stall - if you read their literature, you would be buying their T shirts also.

I used to wear the T shirt in various places of work in the hope that it may strike up a political conversation - of course it fucking didn't ;-)

The T shirts has seen better days but it's got a few more years in it - can the same be said for the IWW? (<--- Does that qualify as political satire or sectarian bitchiness? Erm, I'll let you decide.)

A green sweat top. A Crimbo present from a few years back. Very plain and very comfortable.

My one *cough* good coat, cos it's a wee bit nippy. Describing it as good could get me done under the Trades Description Act - dear reader, it never saw better days and the right sleeve looks even more scabby as the rest of the coat cos of an incident with some spilt white spirit. I won't mention by name the guilty but they know who they are.

10.Did you dream last night?

My sleeping pattern is too shit at the moment - it has been for too long to remember. I'm sure I had a dream during my last deep sleep - a day and a half ago? - and it was one of those bastard dreams where you are replaying a real life event in your head but with a different outcome and a different cast of characters. It was a re-edited replay of a political conference I recently attended. I can only remember fragments of the dream and not enough to recount sensibly here. Only goes to highlight that the event was still rattling around at the back of my mind a week after the event - either that or I must definitely get out more.

11.When did you last laugh?

Mmm, a hard yin. Not 'cos I don't laugh - but because I don't want to say: 'Watching some sitcom on the TV, last night'.

Last real belly laugh I had was on Friday - a colleague had left his MSN messenger on and I pretended to be him when chatting with another colleague who suddenly logged on. Couldn't keep the pretence up for too long 'cos the other colleague was far too good natured to take offence at my attempts to wind him up.

12.What is on the walls of the room you are in?

It's a working office, so not a lot. To my left - behind my shoulder - is an activity calender which is a bit too sparse for my liking; and next to it one of those noticeboards that people stick things to and then the stuff is left up there for far too long. A waste of fucking space in my opinion, and Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen is prepared to back me up on the matter.

13.Seen anything weird lately?

Yeah, a picture of myself from the Conference mentioned above. I have a tendency to avoid getting my picture taken, so it was a bit of a surprise to see it. I didn't really recognise myself, which only serves to further highlight how rarely I pop into happy snaps.

It was a black and white photo and I am in profile which may explain a fair bit, but I need a shave, a haircut and to lose a few pounds. I refuse to say any more on the matter ;-)

14.What do you think of this quiz?

My fingers are starting to go numb - this is not a good sign. I guess I've seen worse quizzes.

15.What is the last film you saw?

Pirates of the Carribbean, courtesy of Suprnova. I enjoyed it - a no-brainer that once you get into the spirit of it is better than most films. I say a no-brainer because if you started to analyse it, or *cough* deconstruct it, it would fall to pieces in your hand. Johnny Depp getting an Oscar nomination for his part? Bollocks - doing a Keith Richards impersonation is hardly top of the actorly range.

In September of every year, you get a fresh cast of thousands of middle class wankers up and down the universities of Britain doing the drugged up muso impersonation with the fake 'cockernee' accent thrown in for free. If they had given an Oscar to Depp for that performance, they would also have had to have given out mini oscars to all those chancers mentioned above when they collect their own copy of the Bob Marley taking a toke poster at the various University Fresher Fairs up and down the country every autumn.

16.If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?

Erm, world peace? Nah - KFC family bucket. No, I'm not joking - the lady bountiful act can only happen after I've had some fried chicken.

17.Tell me something about you that I don't know:

I wouldn't know where to start, or where to finish. I think I will duck that question. Any confessionals on this blog will only be alcohol induced - and not from answering some pop quiz to fill up my second ever post.

18.If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

Sorry, this is one of those crappy Miss World type questions. I can't shrill at the top of my voice "Establish world socialism!", cos that negates the whole idea of what socialism is about and how we go about establishing it.

The answer to the question has to be solipcistic, so I will say: Tutti Frutti gets repeated on prime time television and I have a video recorder to record it for posterity. Selfish but simple.

19.Do you like to dance?

In these shoes? Nah - far too painful. In a crowd of strangers, in the dark and with live music playing, I could push myself to pogo but that is all I can say at the moment.

20.George Bush: is he a power-crazy nutcase or some one who is finally doing something that has needed to be done for years?

Nah - he is nothing more than a poster boy for capitalism, and if he fell off the earth tomorrow he would soon forgotten.

I accept that he is a muppet and a gimp (guppet anybody?) but that fucker ain't the problem, just a pain in the arse for a few years and some other guppet or mimp will come along to fill his Italian loafers.

21.Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

Rachel

22.Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?

John

23.Would you ever consider living abroad?

I'm already living abroad ;-)

Christ these things are hard work - filling in this questionnaire made me feel like one of those politicians that have to get the permanently fixed rictus grin in place during an election campaign - you just want to throw your hands up and run out the room screaming but now its over I can get back to my sloth.